Preliminary Programme

Between 1881 and 1888 Amilcare Cipriani was the most famous convict in Italy. Born in 1843, Cipriani had volunteered with Garibaldi in 1860 and ten years later, in 1871, he had fought in defense of the Paris Commune. During the 60s, being part of a transnational radical network, he lived between Italy, Egypt, and England and he was in contact with Mazzini, Bakunin and, later on, Cafiero; he spent most of the 70s in New Caledonia where was deported together with many former Communards. During this imprisonment, Cipriani “discovered” anarchism.

In 1881 Cipriani finally went back to Italy where was arrested and accused of murder: he was sentenced to twenty years in prison. This sentence caused an extended and international movement of public opinion in his support and claiming for his liberation. Between 1882 and 1888 he was elected, in the Romagna area, nine times to the Italian parliament in order to ensure him the parliamentary immunity. All these elections were revoked. Finally, in 1888, the Italian King pardoned him. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct, from a social history perspective, the peculiar movement claiming for Cipriani's liberation: despite their divisions and their different views, anarchists and republicans shared this social and political mobilization during several years. Cipriani was a garibaldino veteran and this condition, in our opinion, helped the collaboration between anarchists and republicans. The idea that anarchism and republicanism in late 19th Century Italy were two clearly separated, and sometimes opposed, movements is an historiographical myth that we want to question through Cipriani’s example. (Show less)

This paper investigates the legacy of the Italian Risorgimento in the anarchist campaigns against the colonial expeditions to Africa in 1894 and in 1911, and at the outbreak of the First World War.

Italian anarchism emerged in the aftermath of the struggle for national unification. During his sojourn in Naples between 1864 and 1867 Michael Bakunin and his disciples broke with the democratic republican movement led by Mazzini and laid the foundation for the international anarchist movement. However, some of the values and tropes that imbued the republican struggle for national unification remained part of the anarchists’ cultural heritage. In period of wars the Italian anarchists were forced to elaborate and disseminate their own ideas of ‘motherland’ and ‘patriotism’ to counter the mounting nationalist propaganda. It was in this context that the legacy of the Risorgimento resurfaced. This paper explores the significance of this legacy in the newspapers, manifestos, leaflets and also others forms of cultural production such as theatrical plays and poetry that the Italian anarchists disseminated in Italy and in their communities abroad between 1894 and 1914. (Show less)

Errico Malatesta began his political career as a Radical Mazzinian, and like his generation of young activists, leaving in the shadow of the Risorgimento and inspired by the Paris Commune, he broke with Mazzini once the maestro denounced the events in Paris. But the First International depended on Republican strongholds to establish its formidable presence in Italy. By the time Garibaldi died in 1882, Malatesta, had seemingly burned his boats with the tradition of Risorgimento Radicalism. However, throughout his long career, the Italian Republican tradition remained a friend-enemy. Malatesta shared many of the first premises of Mazzinian republicanism: the ethical basis of political action, the importance of the institutional question in Italy and elsewhere, the strategic usefulness of left Republicans in Italy, Spain and elsewhere. But there were also differences too: from question of capitalism and the republicans to the question of parliamentary participation in republics. As late as 1914 (The Red Week) and 1919-1920 (the Biennio Rosso), the republicans or strands and elements of republicanism remained important partners for Malatesta version of direct politics. When Fascism gained hegemony, the Republicans and Malatesta forged new alliances against Mussolini. This paper will tease out this complex fascinating relationship which stretched from 1860s to Malatesta's death in 1932. (Show less)

While the First International’s socialism constituted everywhere a dramatic break with republicanism, in Italy there was also a strong affinity between anarchists and republicans, in two respects: (i) Italian internationalists came off the ranks of Mazzinian republicanism and kept sharing with it a very strong emphasis on morality and moral language that set them apart form marxist socialism; (ii) in Italy, republicanism had always been the party of revolution and anarchists maintained in time a strong affinity with republicans on the practical ground of anti-monarchical insurrectionary projects (again, an affinity stronger than that with socialists, on this ground, too). In this paper I discuss this double affinity, theoretical and tactical, over the four decades between the First International’s inception in Italy in 1871 and the Red Week insurrectionary attempt of 1914. To illustrate this relationship I draw evidence from a diverse range of sources, such as the anarchists’ press, their political programs, correspondence, public speeches, and autobiographical writings. (Show less)